


dealer's choice

by reconditarmonia



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Ill Omens, Pre-Dishonored 2 (Video Game), playing cards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27182668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/pseuds/reconditarmonia
Summary: Billie and Sokolov play cards.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	dealer's choice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacehopper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehopper/gifts).



It isn’t time for Billie and Anton’s weekly card game yet, but the old man is convinced this time that he’s found a foolproof way to win through the application of mathematics and only needs to test it out. Billie humors him, and doesn’t tell him that that might technically be known as “cheating” or ask him if the greatest scientific mind in the Empire wants to end his days as a cardsharp. When they’ve cleared away dinner and the dying orange light is coming in through the open porthole, she deals out a hand to each of them on the rough table.

She picks up her hand, eyeing the cards she holds and the ones face-up in the center. With the two Swords cards already out, all it’ll take is any other face card dealt into the center for her to get a Double Tower with the Lady she’s holding. She wins that game -- mathematics or no mathematics, sometimes it’s all about the cards as they’re dealt. Anton protests that he’s refining his theories as they go.

He deals another game, and Billie turns up her hand to look once more into the Lady’s face. She’s had this deck for years, and it has the frays and stains to show it, but she’s never noticed the cruel twist of the Lady’s smile or the cold pale blue pen-dot of her eyes, both unpleasantly familiar despite the figure’s old-fashioned blonde hairdo and suit. Billie’s not stupid, and she doesn’t think that she’s somehow overlooked it all this time. She moves the card to the back of her hand until she’s out of other options. Anton wins this one. Laughing, he lifts his half-empty glass in a toast to science.

Billie takes the deck and shuffles it meticulously, once, thrice, five times, the way she’s learned to do it one-handed now; as steady as her hand is, she knows she’s doing it as a nervous twitch. “I don’t believe your method worked,” she says. “Let’s see if your luck holds.” She deals herself the Lady again. 

If she says anything to Anton, he’ll tell her that there’s nothing happening here that probability can’t explain, and he’ll be more than ready to explain it. They’re both on edge as they unearth more and more evidence of a conspiracy and wonder every day if they should sail to Dunwall, and she’ll admit that her mind often turns to her past at times like this. But Delilah’s been gone for years. She seemed to drop off the face of the earth not long after Billie’s own exile; none of Billie’s contacts could hear a word of her.

Trying to settle her nerves, Billie scoops up three other ranked face cards into a Court Dance with the Lady and drops the trick face down next to her. With the lesser tricks that she takes, it’s enough to win her the game in the end. Billie wishes she’d lost. She stands up, collecting the cards back into the deck and putting it in her coat pocket; “I think I’m finished for the night,” she says.

“Best of five,” Anton insists.

“Thursday,” Billie promises, putting her hand on his shoulder. “You can perfect it. Get some sleep.”

Upstairs on the ship’s bridge, Billie lights a lamp and smooths out her bedclothes to make enough space to lay down rows of cards for patience. She’s never been one to use them for reading; it’s pretty much bullshit even when you have powers, she remembers from her time with the witches. None of what the rank and file witches hiding in the old Brigmore Manor told her about her future was ever true. Delilah and Breanna didn’t bother with it. But something’s drawing her back to take this sucker’s bet. 

She lays out the cards face down after shuffling for a few minutes, and turns up the first one. It’s dull dread, not shock, that fills her when she sees it’s the Lady.

So’s the next one. And the one after that, all across the row; the same cold blue eyes, multiplied like those of a single huge insect, piercing her just like she remembers from paintings, from marble statues, from being in the presence of Delilah herself. Billie slides the upturned cards out of the way and turns over the next row. Every card in it is her.

Billie doesn’t bother to look at the rest of the deck, after that. She burns the cards down in the ship’s boiler, letting them cascade into the fire and seeing a lick of flame consume that cruel smile before she turns away. Before she goes to sleep, she adds a new deck of cards to their shopping list for next time she or Anton goes ashore. When she wakes, she doesn’t remember her dreams.


End file.
